Software is a ubiquitous component employed for both business and personal purposes. While providing a great benefit, this widespread use also provides a means for introducing unauthorized (or untrusted) code or other types of data into computing systems for insidious purposes. Moreover, despite the threat of unauthorized data, authorized data may be provided for download that can introduce unintended consequences. For example, the authorized data may not have been tested for all or a major set of possible uses, thereby causing errors or failures in the user system.
In a more specific instance, the data can be a file that the user receives in or as an attachment to an email message, or the user accesses via a network or a database. Existing systems can flag such files as potentially malicious files, and then notify the user of this potential. However, it can be the case that the file is not malicious. The user is not offered a way to view the file to make an overriding determination that the file is not malicious and should be received.
One existing approach to address mitigate problem is called file block. The IT administrator can designate certain file formats to be allowed to be opened by an application and other formats to be blocked from opening. However, again, the user can be inundated with alert dialogues that cannot be properly addressed without viewing the file (or data).